Inflation: The ‘horrendous new normal’

Research announced today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has revealed over five million households are being forced to go hungry due to sky-high food prices and inadequate Universal Credit support.

Tomorrow the latest inflation figures will be released to see how the UK economy is performing. However, ahead of this, the JRF have published their recent findings on how the cost-of-living is affecting households.

According to the latest cost-of-living tracker – the fourth in the series of large-scale studies of over 4000 households on low incomes conducted by Savanta – which was published by the JRF, 5.7 million low-income households were found to have to cut down or skip meals because they can’t afford it. Alongside this, the number of households going without heating or basic toiletries has remained at around seven million for more than a year.  

Following this, 2.3 million low-income households on Universal Credit, more than two thirds of those receiving the benefit, have been forced into changing the kind of food they buy – including making less nutritious choices, which is affecting individuals’ health standards.

And if matters couldn’t get any worse, the research discovered 54% of low-income households receiving Universal Credit have been going without three or more essentials, showing the depth if this situation over a prolonged period in spite of cost-of-living payments from the government – earlier this year the government made the decision to provide five payments to people that receive benefits in a bid to help them with inflation inflation, but it is simply not enough.

Rachelle Earwaker, Senior Economist for the JRF, said: ‘Over the past year people have been telling us about being unable to afford hot meals, shampoo, or a warm shower. We are seeing these levels of hardship persist and it has become a horrendous new normal – with over half of low-income households on Universal Credit going without three or more of the essentials that we all need to live.

‘That places a huge burden on families in the here and now, but we need to get real that this is a hardship crisis that won’t end as inflation starts to fall. Higher prices will remain baked in, and cost of living payments, while necessary, are not even providing breathing space for people who desperately need it. That is because the Universal Credit system isn’t based on what people need to live on – even in a good year.

‘The extraordinary levels of food inflation are also forcing people into buying less fresh and healthy food and more packaged, processed or less nutritious food. We know that poverty is already having a profound impact on the nation’s health, and we face the moral outrage of life expectancy falling for some groups. At the same time, hardship on this scale will drive yet more demand onto the NHS over the years to come.

‘It’s vital for this moment and for the years to come that as a nation we commit to an Essentials Guarantee, to ensure that Universal Credit supports us all to at least afford essentials, like food, utilities, and vital household items, while we recover from setbacks. Without this, many families face the bleak prospect of running to catch up but never being able to because they are in a spiral of debt, rising prices and worsening health.’

Feeling as though they have to take matters into their own hands, JRF, together with the Trussell Trust, is calling on the government to implement an Essentials Guarantee, to ensure that, at a minimum, the basic rate of Universal Credit at least covers life’s essentials, and that support can never be pulled below that level.

Image: Ehteshamul Haque Adit